June 5: Globe-trotting photographer Jeff Lipsky’s images have graced the covers and pages of Vogue, Glamour and Esquire magazines. On this night, he shares anecdotes from his sessions with Keith Urban, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood.

June 12: Celebrated photographer and filmmaker Sara Terry spent three years documenting the subculture of the American folk scene. Her lecture will include photos, clips and anecdotes about the singer-songwriters she featured in that film, “Folk.”

June 19: Meet Kurt Markus, who has photographed everything from cowboys to Armani campaigns. His work is regularly featured in solo and group exhibitions.

June 26: Color photography pioneer William Albert Allard has been a contributor to National Geographic Society publications for 50 years. In 2010, National Geographic magazine recognized his work on the American West. Get to know his intimate and immersive photos of his subjects and their lifestyles.

July 10: Award-winning Melanie Dunea talks about her travels around the world on assignment, photographing people of influence and power. She’s also done her share of work for music companies around the world.

July 17: Entertainment photographer Raeanne Rubenstein has snapped telling portraits of stars of film, music and pop culture for magazines, CD covers, films and books. Several of her works are featured in “Country: Portraits of an American Sound.”

July 24: Freelance photographer Michael Wilson has worked extensively in the music industry, photographing artists such as Lyle Lovett, B.B. King and Waylon Jennings. His works are also featured in the exhibit. On this night, Wilson will be joined by guest curator Shannon Perich from the Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

July 31: Amelia Davis shares moments in history through the work of famed photographer Jim Marshall. From the 1950s North Beach Jazz scene in San Francisco through the turmoil of the 1960s and the rock and roll explosion in America, Marshall’s images were iconic. They include Johnny Cash’s groundbreaking Folsom and San Quentin concerts.

Aug. 7: Get to know Ed Rode, whose 33-plus years behind the camera has produced work for Vogue, Time and Sports Illustrated, as well as CMT.com. Many of his shots have graced the covers of top country music magazines and albums.

Aug. 21: Hear from Tim Davis and Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The men are guest curators for “Country: Portraits of an American Sound.”

Aug. 28: Adam Jahiel talks about his career photographing for Time, Newsweek and The New York Times, including capturing the cowboys of the Great Basin — a ruggedly authentic American subculture.

Sept. 4: Meet Danny Clinch, a photographer whose work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and GQ. In addition, he’s presented his work in galleries, published two book and directed music videos for Willie Nelson, Tom Waits and the Avett Brothers, among many others.

Sept. 11: Henry Horenstein has documented artists and audiences at honky tonks, outdoor festivals and community dances to preserve the culture of country music. His photographs as well as his short documentary, “Spoke,” are featured in the exhibit.

Sept. 18: Hear from David McClister, another photographer featured in the exhibit. He specializes in documentary, photojournalism and portraiture, and he’s directed music videos for LeAnn Rimes, Lady Antebellum and The Band Perry.

Sept. 25: Slideshow Night is a presentation of images from artists not featured in the exhibit, but who also photograph the worlds of country music and the American West. It will be held in the Annenberg Space for Photography.

There’s an old black and white photo in the Annenberg Space for Photography’s new “Country: Portraits of an American Sound” exhibit taken seconds after Loretta Lynn was asked to join the Grand Ole Opry cast, and she’s ecstatic — shrieking, arms outstretched. Her hand is just outside the frame.

“It aggravated me that I cut off her hand — but the little dickens, she did that,” says Les Leverett, who snapped a surprised Lynn in 1962 while working as the Opry’s official in-house photographer.

The photo hangs in the Century City gallery through Sept. 28 alongside more than 100 documentary, studio, promotional and fine art prints that chronicled the music and ideals it came to embody over the decades, from its post World War II expansion to the 21st century.

“Country is now part of a massive entertainment empire that spans regional, social and cultural divides,” says Leonard Aube, executive director of the Annenberg Foundation. “And photography has played such a significant role in shaping how we individually and collectively understand this music and its creators.” .

Organized chronologically, the exhibit opens with the works of Elmer Williams, a restaurateur turned amateur photographer, whose candid shots of music industry gatherings and backstage at the Opry includes one of 12-year-old Brenda Lee in her first Nashville performance in 1957.

Williams began photographing country music stars in the 1940s — that’s when the music coalesced in Nashville and was stamped country-western. Before that, it was just regional folk music.

Elsewhere, there’s an image of June Carter kicking up her heels taken in 1954 by studio photographer Walden S. Fabry. He moved to Nashville in the 1940s at the urging of comedian Minnie Pearl and became a favorite among the early entertainers.

“He made us look glamorous,” Pearl would say of Fabry, who continued his work through the 1960s. “He didn’t treat us like a bunch of ignorant people from the sticks. Instead, he treated us like Hollywood stars.”

Advertisement

Leverett was another pioneer. The veteran Opry photographer’s featured work includes behind-the-scenes snapshots and performance stills, including a young Willie Nelson’s first night on the Opry as a regular. He had performed many times as a guest.

“He looks like he’s stepping out of a Sears-Roebuck catalog,” Leverett says.

One of his favorites is Cash taking a bow under the spotlight on his ABC show in 1970.

“Cash was one of these people that you could feel his presence when he went into a room, you knew he was there,” he says. “I just loved him to death. He was difficult sometimes, but never with me. He thought he was one time and apologized for it.”

Annenberg Space for Photography put together the exhibit with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, as well as Arclight Productions, which has created two original documentaries — a short about the photography of Kenny Rogers and a feature presentation that looks back at the 80-year history of country music through photography.

Also featured is a short by Boston-based documentarian Henry Horenstein about the legendary Texas music hall the Broken Spoke.

“My thing was to document the people around the music, the fans,” Horenstein says. “And that’s what I am, really.”

Elsewhere, there are country music albums, movie posters, a jukebox with rare, archival audio files, a slideshow of digital images and artifacts from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s collection, including musical instruments and stage costumes.

Of the gorgeous works by L.A. photojournalist Leigh Wiener is a close-up of Johnny Cash — eyes closed and singing into the microphone. A 1974 image by entertainment photographer Raeanne Rubenstein captures Tammy Wynette sitting on a patio chair at home in Nashville looking more like one of “Charlie’s Angels” with her big hair and oversized sunglasses than a country star.

On the flip side, there’s a 1973 photo Henry Diltz took of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott looking every bit like the cowboy with lasso in hand. Other standouts include David McClister’s 2012 photo of The Band Perry posed against an industrial Louisiana backdrop.

“Everybody’s got a different style and a different way of looking at things,” says Horenstein, a professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design whose featured work includes a 1972 picture of Dolly Parton at Symphony Hall in the photographer’s hometown of Boston.

She’s standing in a nondescript area of the venue and the ordinariness of it stands out.

”Like the musicians, photographers — if they’re good, if they’re consistent, if they’re honest — are who they are,” he says. “If you see my pictures, you may like them or not like them, but I hope you’ll see that they were my pictures. That’s the goal.”